All She Wrote
by TumblingEtceteras
Summary: She was the beautiful girl with empty eyes and an unsettling aura. Nobody stopped to look, nobody stopped to speak. Nobody except him.
1. Chapter 1

DISCLAIMER: All characters are the property of Disney. Lyrics by Ross Copperman.

* * *

_She wanders all alone  
This is all, she's ever really known  
A stranger in her skin  
Nothing more, it's all she's ever been  
She spills these words across the page  
It helps to ease the pain, and she cries_

_Nobody out there  
Wants to understand  
Nobody out there  
Takes me as I am  
I'm feeling alone here  
I know there's got to be  
Somebody somewhere  
That's all she wrote_

* * *

Life was like wading through a thick, never-ending fog. Gabriella Montez's life was grey – no nuances – and the lights and chatter of the lives encircling her pressed the damp warmth and darkness of the fog closer to her body.

She was the beautiful girl with empty eyes and an unsettling aura. Nobody stopped to look, nobody stopped to speak. Her tear ducts had frozen months ago and the ice had spilled from her soul; burning a circle of isolation around her weary body.

There were books and there were sums. There was math and science and literature; fact and fiction. There were the fantastic worlds that she tumbled into as she thumbed through the worn pages of well-loved books. There were the friends and lovers of old that would have stopped to notice the girl wandering alone through the busy streets of New York City with a sad smile on her face. It was comforting to fall into the classic tales that gave her faith that maybe someday, somewhere Gabriella would find something else.

It was comforting to think that the blurred faces of the people that flowed passed her in the streets really were something more than blurred faces; that they were different to her.

The city was vast and convulsing, shallow and asphyxiating and it was supposed to be an escape. She had meant it to be a new start. It should have been a move, a leap of faith that carried her away from the insufferable sadness and torture of memories. A chance to be an adult, a chance to find out who she was outside of the loving daughter that had nursed her mother through the last few traumatising years of early-onset Alzheimer's; that's what it should have been.

The move had given her something to busy her hands and her mind. The packing and the organising had descended into lists and revised lists. Gabriella had lists but no plans; at least not for anything that mattered.

What was the point of planning for a life that had dissolved in front of her eyes?

Her apartment wasn't a home. It reeked of emptiness and loneliness. Sitting alone with her books and her lists, grief seeped under the door and through the cracks in the paintwork; it haunted the words that she read and the shaky breaths that she inhaled.

So she walked.

She let her feet carry her through the crowded streets. Shadows fell over her as she moved; it was as if the bustling city was trying to blot her out of its vibrant pages. She walked and she walked and not a single person stopped to look at the beautiful girl with the leaking eyes and soul.

In the evenings, Gabriella went home and she cried. She cried over the family she had lost and the independence that she never really had. She wept over the life the she'd wanted and as she drifted into a wet, uncomfortable sleep she wondered when things would ever fall back into place.

She dreamt of books and of fairytales. Men bathed in white light and women with glittering smiles danced through her unconscious and her mother's memory embraced her in the dark.

* * *

_She always feels so small  
Pushed aside, a flower on the wall  
They never ask her name  
No one sees, the girl without a face  
She spills these words across the page  
It helps to ease the pain, and she cries_

_Nobody out there  
Wants to understand  
Nobody out there  
Takes me as I am  
I'm feeling alone here  
I know there's got to be  
Somebody somewhere  
That's all she wrote_

* * *

It was a Thursday the first time that she saw it. She had always hated Thursdays; they stank of the sickening white of hospital corridors and the torrential black of the heaven's tears.

The muggy air and demons that had already chased her from San Diego to New York had spewed her from her apartment and onto the streets that glimmered in the sunlight. She had wandered aimlessly, trying to find the answer to a question that had never been posed and spotted the cafe tucked away in a corner that had managed to avoid the sun's glare. Its consolatory gloominess and isolated quiet had drawn her in and rescued her from the overwhelming laughter of the world outside.

Gabriella had ambled over to the counter; that's when it had happened. The sandy haired boy behind the counter had looked up from his paper as she approached and smiled. He'd seen her and his eyes had lit up and Gabriella thought that maybe, just maybe, there really was something beautiful to be found in the world that existed outside the pages of her familiar books. His eyes were like oceans, blue and warm and chilling like the clichés told her existed. It made her fingers itch with the words that had died at the nib of her dry pen and not dared to spill forth for years. She had taken the coffee that he handed over; an unfamiliar warmth on her cheek. Uncharacteristically glancing back at a man who finally had a face, she only caught the bounce of his hair as it seemed to fall back into place and his eyes gazed out in the opposite direction.

That afternoon Gabriella plucked her forgotten notepad from her bag and surveyed blank page upon blank page.

It was like staring into a mirror.

Her biro was a lead pipe in her grasp and her fingers strained as they tried to remember how it had felt to be led by it. It bled out onto the first line and ink seared the underlying pages. For a moment Gabriella's fingers had twitched and her mind sparked but the weight of the pen in her hand was too much and she let it fall. As she sipped at her coffee, a lone tear trickled a translucent path down her cheek and she sighed.

Her traipsing always led her there. She began to think, with a wry smile on her face, that it was the sort of coffee shop that her mother would have loved. Her mother would have adored the aroma of fresh coffee mixed with the worn leather of the furniture and the scratched varnish of the floorboards. Maria Montez would have berated her daughter for spending so much money sipping expensive coffee as she conjured words out of parched air and tried to ensnare them on paper.

Gabriella wasn't really sure when exactly she had stopped letting her feet direct her there and when it had been the thought of the handsome student taking her order that made the decision to head to _Lily's_ for her. She wondered when the casual _"how are you, today?"_ had become the words that teased her from her slumber and opened her eyes to the brightness of the new day. She pondered whether the day's headlines had ever been as interesting or thrilling before he had chosen to start announcing them to her upon her arrival.

She realised how much she'd missed the sound of her own laugh. Her voice had never sounded as alive as it did when she answered his mundane questions.

The weeks ticked by, collapsing on top of each other and fading into a haze, and the glimmer of warmth and character that had been caked in the muddy brown of her eyes gradually reignited.

* * *

It was a Thursday when Troy Bolton swallowed his anxiety and decided it was the day to extend his conversation with the enigmatic beauty beyond the habitual _"how are you today" _and announcement that the Senate Panel had approved a new healthcare bill. He had always loved Thursdays: the air always seemed crisper and cleaner and excited to ring in the weekend as soon as possible.

It was the day that she had first walked into his grandmother's coffee shop too.

She was the enigmatic beauty that had started brightening up his days at work almost two months ago. When a tentative shadow had fallen over his newspaper that wintry afternoon, Troy wasn't sure what sight he had been expecting to greet him when he looked up.

It hadn't been her.

He never could have imagined her.

She was so damn stunningly beautiful, magnificently so, that it had taken his breath away. He had smiled, instinctively, when she had asked for a cup of black coffee and Troy was positive that he had never before felt the need to put so much effort into such a simple task. He hadn't been able to suppress the awe-filled smile, even when he had noted the implicit sadness in her eyes and the way that she carried herself. The hint of shock that melted from her features upon noting his smile had been spine-chilling.

Troy had never seen anybody look so completely lost.

His heart had skipped a beat at the delicate blush that had caressed her cheeks when their hands brushed. Driven by curiosity and something else, something undefined, his eyes had hopelessly followed her body as it slinked over to the cosiest corner of the room. It had been a quiet afternoon and Troy never finished reading his paper. He'd watched the enigma and been moved by her insistent gaze at the notepad in front of her. She hadn't written a word.

She had barely written a word in the two months that she had been frequenting the establishment. Even on the days when pen and paper managed to copulate, she would never leave the coffee shop without first ripping the offending pages from her notebook and discarding them on her way out. Troy spotted her tears and wondered what those faithless words were costing her.

He wondered why they cost her so much.

One day, though, and Troy wasn't precisely sure when it had happened – perhaps it had been a gradual change- she had greeted him with a smile. It was a smile that had bathed her entire face in an ethereal glow.

His enigma's eyes had always been enthralling, sometimes unsettlingly so. Her dull irises had been scarred by her obvious distress and sometimes a mere glance into them had been enough to make his breath tremble in his throat. Now, however, her eyes smouldered with the understated warmth of an August afternoon.

Often it was a radiance that was short lived for as soon as she retreated to her table, the silence of her pen seemed to descend her russet orbs into a premature dusk.

Today was the day though, Troy had decided. Mainly because it was a Thursday but also because it had been four days since he had seen her weep over her notebook and he figured that now was as good a time as any.

She was early and as she sauntered over to the counter Troy realised that he really had no idea how he had intended to set his plan into motion.

"Morning!" she had said quietly and Troy gulped as he tried to remember what it was that his job actually entailed.

A nervous smile coaxed the corners of his lips into action and he softly returned her greeting. "What are you having today?" Troy asked, finding his voice. It didn't matter that she only ever ordered a cup of black coffee, or that he had already programmed the machine before her answer sounded. Troy found that any opportunity to hear her voice was worth the superfluous words.

"Just a black coffee, please."

His heart was dancing erratically in his ribcage as he tried to think two steps ahead; as Troy Bolton tried to think of a way to prolong their conversation. He placed the full cup back on the counter, as far away from her as possible, and his tongue felt stuck to the bottom of his dry mouth. Inexplicable nerves confounded him and he fell silent.

Troy and Gabriella's eyes met and the air ignited a golden trail between their souls.

For so long Gabriella had been a wallflower. She had been emptiness wrapped in a skin but something had changed. Instead of puncturing it, the claw of needles clenched around her heart had begun to foxtrot its tingling points over the muscle.

Gabriella broke their silence. The hollow was filled. "No headline today?" she murmured; the joviality of her tone tasted sweet and she longed to try it again.

Blinking, Troy tried not to blush at the feelings that this uninitiated change in their ritual had provoked. He glanced down at the paper and scanned the headlines. Feeling emboldened, he smiled after making his selection. "The New York Philharmonic is playing in Central Park tonight."

"That's nice," Gabriella responded with a smile. Her hand was shaking as she reached across for her cup. It must have been the cold.

Their eyes communicated a message that neither knew how to decipher and Gabriella turned away to take up her usual seat and stare at her notepad waiting for the words to form themselves from out of the jumble of her brain.

Half an hour later, Troy knew that he had to make his move. A freshly made cup of coffee in his hand, he wandered over to her table. The way that her eyelashes fluttered in momentary confusion as the darkness of his shadow settled over her back was almost enough to make Troy forget what he was there for in the first place.

She looked up at him, her eyes wide in an amalgam of confusion and bashfulness, and Troy coughed nervously before speaking. "I was just wondering whether you wanted another cup of coffee now." The second's quiet that followed was too long and he hurried to explain himself. "It's a special offer, I mean. You get your second cup of coffee free and I thought that, you know, since you looked like you've finished your first one that you might want one now."

Eyebrows furrowed, Gabriella smiled softly. "A special offer?"

"Yes." Troy cursed himself mentally for rambling. "Because it's a Thursday."

Gabriella sighed. "I hate Thursdays."

His limited confidence was dwindling by the second. "Thursdays are great days. The day in between Lousy Wednesday and Waiting Friday," he quipped and was surprised when his comment had made her giggle.

"Do you steal all of your philosophy from Steinbeck novels?" Gabriella asked in wry amusement.

Setting the cup down on the table, Troy shrugged nervously. "It's better than stealing it from 'The Simpsons'," he countered. Their exchange lulled into muted contemplation and the silence wove its thread between their bodies. "So," Troy mumbled as he scratched the back of his neck. "I suppose I should get back to work or whatever. Enjoy your coffee, Miss. – "

"Gabriella," she rushed in instinctively. A rosy blush spread across her cheeks at the flash of excitement in his eyes.

Smiling boyishly, Troy ducked his head as he offered her his own name. "Troy, I am, I mean."

Gabriella laughed. "I know," she murmured, gesturing to the name-tag that he was wearing.

"Oh, yeah."

The threads of silence binding them began to vibrate awkwardly and Gabriella fought to shake her jitters as she reached for her purse. "Here, I need to pay for my coffee..."

Holding his hands up, Troy shook his head. "Don't worry about it. Thursday special, remember!"

Gabriella's blush only deepened at her forgetfulness and Troy was positive that it made her even more beautiful. "Well, just thank you then."

"You're welcome. Very." Troy dug his hands into his pocket whilst the husky words toppled off his tongue. "That must be a tough essay," he shrugged, attempting conversation as he nodded towards the stark white of her notepad.

Gabriella took a slow sip of her coffee and the mug hid the sad smile that snuck back onto her face. "Oh. It's not an essay luckily. It's a – " she sighed loudly. "It's a book, or supposed to be. I write," she amended herself. "I used to write but – "

Troy detected her uneasiness and cut in straight away. "Oh, I just assumed that you were a student too. I mean, you look sort of my age and stuff."

Leaning back in her chair, Gabriella carefully observed the boy that she was chatting to. The words slipped off her tongue without her ever really needing to consider them. "I sort of am: I had to defer for a few years but I start here again in the fall. I just used to enjoy writing. It's cathartic, relaxing, exciting...all sorts of things really. Most of the time."

Nodding in understanding, Troy's shoulders slumped when he heard the bell above the door signal the entrance of another customer. "I suppose I should get back to work. Nice talking to you, Gabriella."

Was it the genuine smile on his face? Was it the tangible regret in his voice? Gabriella wasn't sure what it was but for the first time in an age something coursed through her veins. It was a feeling that could only be labelled 'happiness'.

She grinned. It was wide and bright and flashes of gold and yellow and contentment burst in Troy's vision.

He waved as he walked backwards towards the counter but his foot stuck to the floor at the point at which he should have turned. His mouth opened of its own accord and Troy blushed at the words that he knew were going to be expelled from it. "Do you have plans tonight, by any chance?"

Gabriella looked startled; too startled to say a word. Shaking her head slowly, her blush returned.

"Do you maybe want to check out the music in the park tonight?"

Her voice was foreign to her ears. It was firm and joyful and wrapped itself around the three letters of her response in an elated grip. "Yes," she replied and Troy grinned.

"Awesome!" He gestured behind him at the counter and Gabriella watched him race to serve the other customer with a spring in his step.

Looking down at the empty page, her fingertips tingled with the words swimming across her vision.

Her pen didn't feel heavy any longer.

* * *

_Her great escape  
She found her place  
And she's never gonna be the same  
It's beautiful  
Cuz now she knows_

_~  
There's somebody out there  
Who wants to understand  
There's somebody out there  
Who takes me as I am  
I'm feeling at home here  
I knew there had to be  
Somebody somewhere_

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Her pen scratched away at the page, filling its void with the words that had previously fallen numb and withered onto her tongue. Each word, each metaphorical tear and cry dripped wearily from the newly opened bottle of emotions within which they had been encased. They dripped onto the solemn white of the paper and wet it with their weeping. They sobbed a blend of pain and relief across the page and released their owner from their hold. Gabriella felt her breaths again. Her windpipe no longer felt constricted and the cool gulps of air that flowed in and out of it were dizzying.

The feeling was dizzying: the thrill of her passion and the relieved pressure on her soul. The grief and mourning and tentative excitement spilled over her once blank page and the intense, searching blue of the ink was a warming promise.

She felt release; its syntax was awkward and foreign but it was there.

Verbs reacquainted themselves with adverbs, nouns grinned at their union with adjectives and the page filled with colour and life. Gabriella's cursive script wrapped the letters in its voluptuousness and chased her muse across line after line.

Cups were emptied, tables were cleared and soon she was the only customer left. She had barely registered Troy's movement as he cleaned the tables around her. The long-lost vibrancy of everyday had bathed Gabriella in its pacifying warmth and she had temporarily lost her grasp on its intricacies. It was only the sound of an apologetic cough from beside her that drew Gabriella from her page. Her eyes registered the emptiness behind Troy and Gabriella blushed upon realising that the rest of the customers had exited into the soft dusk.

"Do you mind if I take your cups?" Troy asked quietly; almost annoyed at himself from disrupting her. There was something about the sparkle of her eyes as she wrote that captivated him. It was electric and fascinating and its accompanying smile overwhelmed him. "I'm just starting to clear up and stuff," he added as a superfluous explanation.

Gabriella glanced at her silver watch and her eyes widened in shock. "Oh, goodness, I didn't realise how late it was! You closed almost half an hour ago! I'm so sorry!"

Troy set his basin full of dishes down on the table and shrugged; shooting her a disarming smile. "Don't worry about it: I can clean up around you. You just looked so – " He blushed at the plethora of words that his mind was daring him to voice. Reaching up to scratch the back of his neck, his blush only intensified. "And, you know, if you still want –" Troy's voice crackled with nervousness. "I mean, if you did want to head down to the park afterwards then, well, I thought that maybe we could just head from here." At her continued silence, Troy's rambling kicked into overdrive. "Because, well, the orchestra starts playing in an hour and a half and we should probably get there about half an hour beforehand and I don't know where you live but it might take you a while to go back and you don't have much stuff so it sort of made sense to me to head straight from here. But..." His words faded into silence when his eyes looked up from the spot on the floor that he had been addressing and met her flushed face.

Playing with the hem of her skirt, Gabriella took a moment to really consider what she was about to do. She had one friend in the city, one old school-friend who knew everything about Gabriella's situation and unintentionally continued to remind her of it. There was something so unfortunately familiar about Taylor McKessie that Gabriella could never shake from the background of her consciousness when they were together. They would talk and laugh, and yet weighing down on her mind would be her friend's connection to 'home': the knowledge that her Mother had always liked Taylor; the fact that Taylor had been so determined to replicate Maria Montez' _Chicken Enchiladas Suiza_ that she had begged for repeated cooking lessons until she had mastered it. They were small things and Taylor didn't even have to mention her mother for Gabriella to feel the bristling discomfort of familiarity crawling all over her and keeping her numb to the outside world. There was something about 'this', about the newness of her acquaintance with Troy that Gabriella craved. She had never been the type of outgoing person who was able to walk into a room and start conversing with strangers. She had always been timid and cautious and sometimes so sensible that it became an aggravating flaw. A couple of years ago she might have deflected his attempts at conversation with a polite but firm smile that left no room for anything else to be said. She gulped and a shameful red painted a blotchy streak under her eyes. "I – This – " Casting her eyes to the ground, Gabriella had to frown as her feet fell upon his worn sneakers with different coloured laces. It was just another quirk that inexplicably drew her to this near-stranger. "I barely know you," she muttered apologetically. "I mean, I don't know anything about you and this is just – " A sad smile subdued her face as she gestured vaguely in an attempt to give voice to her feelings.

The curve of Troy's lips mirrored hers as he listened to her speaking. He was vaguely aware of the spontaneity of his suggestion. It was a whirlwind craziness that had coloured a lot of his actions since she had started visiting the coffee shop where he worked.

Pulling out a chair, he turned it around before sitting down on it and resting his chin on its back. "I get that," Troy muttered. "I know that this is a bit crazy but it's just two people getting to know each other." He smiled softly as he registered her dwindling reluctance. "We're not strangers. You know plenty about me..."

Gabriella hid a faint smile at the tender supplication in his voice. "I do?" she wondered out loud, feeling a wonderful tingling down her spine at the look in his eyes.

"Sure you do. You know that I'm called Troy." He grinned at her chuckle. "Troy Bolton, in fact, so you've just learned something else about me. You know that I work in a coffee shop called _Lily's_, and you might have noticed that Lily is my grandma; she sometimes still works behind the counter when she's feeling chatty." Shuffling in his chair, Troy felt his bravery grow and inflate his chest ecstatically. "You know that I'm a student in New York and that I've read 'Sweet Thursday' by John Steinbeck. I've seen you almost every day for months now: that's more than I've seen my best friend, Chad, who comes from Albuquerque so we don't visit often during the vacation." Flummoxed, Troy found himself trying to think of what else he could use to convince Gabriella. "What else do you know about me?" he found himself wondering out loud.

He was surprised when she answered. "I know that you make an amazing _Americano._ I know that you read the newspaper back-to-front." Giggling, Gabriella elaborated. "Because you always flick so frantically to the front page..."

Troy shrugged. "I'm a bit of a sports' junkie: I can't not read the sports' pages first."

Silence washed over them again and the tension in the air was palpable. There was an unarticulated excitement and bravado levitating between their bodies and as their eyes met both knew what its outcome would be.

Clearing his throat nervously, Troy flicked his bangs out of his eyes. "I like peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches," he explained. "I think I'm quite talented at making them too, even if my grandma tells me it's the easiest thing in the world. I could make some to take with us tonight, if you want?" he asked and the question swayed hypnotically in the blank space enveloping them.

Gabriella ducked her head to hide the pink blush that returned to her cheeks. "Chunky or smooth?" she asked timidly.

"Smooth?"

"That works for me."

It took a moment for Troy to grasp her implication. Their eyes met again and all uncertainty melted away.

_Hush, baby don't cry  
Just get through this night  
Overcome_

Cuz all that you are  
Is broken inside  
But they'll never know  
They'll never know

Don't think that they'll change  
They push you away  
Far from home

Cuz all that they are  
Is broken inside  
But they'll never know  
They'll never know

Skyscrapers dipped their toes in an orange light that illuminated the thick, warm purple-sky as the perfectly harmonised notes played by the Philharmonic orchestra met and merged in a dance that coated the entire area in bliss.

It was a tentative delight that had received its initial spark from the shy conversation between the pair anchored to a picnic blanket towards the back of the park. There was a natural ease to their dialogue, something that neither could put their finger on. Everything was sparks and electricity and understanding flowing between them and the wires were coated in promise.

"So you're studying comparative literature with a minor in creative writing?" Troy asked enthusiastically. "And you're going into your...?"

"Second year." She left no room for expansion. "I've always loved reading and when I was in senior year I started to write. It was just short stories and poems but I found it to be an – " Gabriella stumbled over the world and uttered it in a nervous rush. "It was an escape. For a while, anyway. I figured it would be good to do something I really enjoyed at university and it was amazing to learn about what I did for fun and just, I don't know, understand and improve on what I was doing naturally."

A hesitant but intrigued smile painted itself over Troy's lips. He'd spent so long silently (bashfully) observing her and every word that she said filled the lines of his hitherto pale sketch of her with colour. They had side-stepped serious conversation ever since they had left the coffee shop. They had posed silly questions and recounted even sillier stories. There was a gaping space that they were avoiding though. He had understood the need to circumvent it and yet he felt impelled to highlight it. "Where do you come from?" he asked. It was an inquiry that he supposed he should have made earlier in the evening. It was one of the typical 'getting-to-know-you' questions that he would have asked anybody else almost immediately. That underlying 'something' had just made him implicitly aware that it might not be the most harmless of questions to ask this particular woman.

Her evasion confirmed his subconscious suspicions. "Where do _you _come from?" she asked with a grin that was angelic enough to almost entirely deflect his inklings.

"New York, born and bred," Troy acquiesced with a smile. "Pretty much all of my Dad's side of the family still lives in the same district that they were brought up in too. Gramma's had that coffee shop for almost fifty years." Gabriella's facial expression warped to display how impressed she was but Troy didn't give her the opportunity to voice her awe. "Now how come you know almost everything about me, whereas I only know your favourite colour and the fact that you only write on recycled paper?"

As the evening had progressed, the two had gradually inched closer to each other on the tartan blanket; at his quiet inquiry Gabriella had to strain herself to avert her eyes from his own searching ones. He had a subtly bewitching scent and she could still detect the aroma of fresh coffee whenever she inhaled deeply. It combined with his shining, luring eyes that were like trapdoors to his every thought and it made him utterly enthralling, too enthralling to look away. Even as her eyes fell to the ground, Gabriella could feel him watching her – unravelling her. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck and she didn't doubt that he could see right through her deflection of all topics relating to her life before this year.

She didn't doubt that he had sensed it from the moment that they had met.

Gabriella was good with words. She knew how they were supposed to combine and she knew the way to manipulate them into exhaling the emotion that she wanted them to. Gabriella was articulate and sensitive and yet when it came to her own situation she had no idea what to say. It had been almost six months and she hadn't spoken about the torment and the sadness and the interminable grief.

She hadn't spoken about it but what was worse was that she didn't even know how to. Gabriella was desperate to break out of the paralysing cage of her emotions and try to gain a grasp on her life again. She no longer wanted to be dragged along in an unaware daze because it was the only thing she could do to numb the pain that threatened to crack her ribcage open and drown her heart in the poisonous fluid of her tears. She wanted to escape but she didn't because that moment of flight meant that she would have to forget. It meant moving on and she just didn't know how that could ever be possible.

It was a fear that had spit its presence at her for months.

It was a fear that practically evaporated in the glow of his concerned gaze. One look into Troy's eyes, one palpitation of her heart at his smile, it was all that it took for her to breathe freely. Just being with him made her heart shrink back to its normal size and ease the crushing pressure against her chest.

If everything in life had made sense, then it was a realisation that should have been unsettling to Gabriella. But oh how well Gabriella knew that life didn't make sense.

"_Where do you come from?"_

"_How come you know almost everything about me, whereas I only know your favourite colour and the fact that you only write on recycled paper?"_

The questions rebounded from the distant corner that her previous obviation had banished it to and they demanded an answer. Looking up, bubbles of knowledge and 'something' formed in her throat and her eyes met his. Thousands of ineffable sentiments and contemplations radiated in the explosive glance and the words began to tumble.

"It's not exactly a happy story - my past, I mean. It's not stuff that people want to hear because they never know what to say. I'm not..." Tears welled in her eyes at the confession. "I'm not what people expect me to be. Nobody knows how to act around me; people used to look at me like a charity case. There was nothing but pity in their eyes and it was as if they couldn't wait to get away from me." Troy's expression didn't change as she spoke. His eyes still shone with concern and admiration and that something else; there was no pity lurking beneath the surface. "I was born in San Diego, lived there until I was seven and then my Father died of a heart-attack. We moved to Santa Jose, Fresco – where my Grandmother lives, and most recently San Francisco. I started my degree at USC but had to stop after my first year because...because..." Cracks shot from her voice box to the underside of her tongue and just articulating the rest of the sentence would have been like walking barefoot across a desert of fire.

Troy cocked his head to the side and Gabriella jolted when she felt him grasp her hand. His fingers were strong and warm. The sympathy and comprehension in his cool, blue eyes rehydrated her throat but more importantly they told her that she didn't need to say anything else.

"I'm sorry." They were words that so many people had offered up in an inadequate attempt at comforting her. He didn't mean them like that. "I'm sorry I pushed you. You don't need to tell me everything, not today, anyway."

In the background the music began to reach a crescendo and plummet towards its resolution. "I don't like talking about my past because I just feel so...broken..."

She felt so broken but they way that Troy was looking at her and making her feel promised that perhaps she wouldn't always be.

Leaning back with his weight supported on his free arm, Troy shook his hair from his bangs before sending a considered, insistent look in her direction. "You aren't broken. If people think that it's because they don't know how to read what they're looking at. You aren't broken, Gabriella." She gulped and his determination tugged her chin down to nod. "You're hurting but that's something that one day won't stop you from living your life." The smile that Troy sent in her direction should have clashed with the solemnity of his tone.

It didn't.

Gabriella found her own lips desperately willing themselves to curve upwards and a forgotten giggle seeped over their edges. "This is insane. You don't even know me."

She tried to hide under her eyelashes at the admission but Troy squeezed her hand and drew her eyes back to his face. "I know enough, Gabriella. I know that you hate Thursdays. Your favourite colour is blue and you have an embarrassing obsession with the Backstreet Boys. I know that you've read Steinbeck's 'Sweet Thursday' and that you pay enough attention when you do read to recognise when someone is trying to make themselves sound more interesting by stealing quotations from novels. I know that you drink strong, black coffee – and that's a key thing to know about somebody you're going to be friends with. I know that you're passionate, because you put so much into your writing and get so upset when your muse won't cooperate. I know that your smile is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen." He blushed and chuckled when her own face adopted a pink hue. "I know that you make me blush without having to say a word. You've moved around a lot and are lost, I know that. But I also know that you aren't broken because you are warm and because you're here with me tonight." He took a deep-breath. "I'm rambling again – you do that to me too- but I think the past is just something that's shaped you, not something that defines you. Most of all I know that I want to know more about you. I want to see you smile and laugh because I can just tell that's how you were always supposed to be. I know the important things."

For a moment the vast green of the park disappeared. The packed skyline sunk into the ground and the unobtrusive noise of the orchestra dimmed into silence. Gabriella looked up and she saw him.

She saw Troy and she finally knew that her past was just a history. It wasn't who she was.

It most certainly wasn't who she would be.

_Don't you cry tonight  
Rest your weary eyes  
Cuz all that you are  
Is broken inside  
It's nothing you could change  
It's nothing you could hide  
It's nothing you could hide_

Pink flowers and bows  
That's all you should know  
And summer days  


_Cuz all that you are  
Is beautiful child  
But they'll never know  
They'll never know_


	3. Chapter 3

**Lyrics by Alexi Murdoch – "Song for You". I'd actually recommend listening to this whilst reading: it sets the mood perfectly!**

**

* * *

  
**

_So today I wrote a song for you  
Cause a day can get so long  
And I know it's hard to make it through  
When you say there's something wrong_

_So I'm trying to put it right  
Cause I want to love you with my heart  
All this trying has made me tight  
And I don't know even where to start_

_Maybe that's a start  


* * *

_

Each day that had passed since that evening filled Troy's awkwardly-built conception of Gabriella from the inside out. She was no longer the enigmatic beauty that haunted his afternoons with her radiantly chilling presence.

She was just beautiful, beautifully numb.

Part of Troy wished that Gabriella had never been brave enough to tell him about the recent death of her Mother and the more distant death of her Father. Part of Troy wished that he was still unable to precisely diagnose the sickening gray that veiled her eyes at the most spontaneous of instances. She would smile and laugh at his jokes, Gabriella would tumble whole-heartedly into passionate discussions of her favourite films and books and all sorts of topics, but she still tried to hide her pain.

Sometimes, and Troy always knew when it was happening, their chats would unearth a piece of information that reminded Gabriella that little too much of the sadness that she was running from and she would grow silent.

It scared Troy that the autumnal afternoon blazing within her irises could crackle and burn to nothing so quickly.

When it did, he would wrap his arm around her shoulders or hold her hand and the tiny spark of recognition and warmth that glimmered in the corner of her eyes was enough to give him hope that the warmth would be back.

It nearly always came back.

That afternoon, Gabriella had walked into his coffee-shop bundled up in layer upon layer of clothing and before even attempting to offer him a deceptive smile she had leaned into his body and initiated a hug that he would normally spend uncomfortable seconds building up the courage to give.

She had answered his searching look with a transparent inquiry about how work had been that day and Troy had been happy to play along with her ruse. Her dulled eyes drooped into the bags painting weary blue streaks under them.

Troy wondered how long it had been since she had slept properly.

After his shift had ended, Troy convinced Gabriella that she needed his speciality Mac-and-Cheese and hot-chocolate before going home. That had been five hours ago.

Dinner had been accompanied by a viewing of 'Sleepless in Seattle', a film whose presence in his DVD collection Troy blamed vehemently on his absent room-mate. His protest had triggered an explosion of giggles from her lips; she knew full well that he had bought the film after a conversation that they had had about it weeks ago.

They had settled together on the worn sofa, a tentative distance between them that closed as muscles grew weary and unfounded resistance lost its voice. Two hours ago Gabriella had fallen asleep, her head on Troy's shoulder, and ever since he had tried to swallow his breathing, petrified that the tranquillity guarding her in the land of dreams might be broken.

She was magnificent, Troy had decided a little over an hour ago: charming and funny, incredibly intelligent and beautiful with a compassion that almost jarred with her latent grief. She was so strong and he wanted nothing more than to be able to help her. He didn't want the smiles that she gifted him with to be intermittent.

He hated the thought that they faded when she was alone.

He hated the bad days; they made his chest constrict and his heart wrenched when he had to let her go back to her isolation and grief.

Slowly, a nervous hand traced her defined cheekbone and the nerves on the pad of his thumb sparked at the contact. He wiped a strand of hair out of her eyes before shifting her into his hold and laying her down on the sofa. A moment passed as he regarded her to make sure that her sleep hadn't been interrupted and his final act was to cover her dormant form with a blanket.

As Troy moved into his bedroom, he failed to close the door properly behind him: aware that forcing it over the raised floor-board might wake her.

Pulling out his guitar, Troy ran his fingers painstakingly over the strings and began to play.

* * *

_Cause you know it's a simple game  
That you play filling up your head with rain  
And you know you are hiding from your pain  
In the way, in the way you say your name_

_And I see you  
Hiding your face in your hands  
Flying so you won't land  
You think no one understands  
No one understands_

_So you hunch your shoulders and you shake your head  
And your throat is aching but you swear  
No one hurts you, nothing could be sad  
Anyway you're not here enough to care_

_And you're so tired you don't sleep at night  
As your heart is trying to mend  
You keep it quiet but you think you might  
Disappear before the end_

_And its strange that you cannot find  
Any strength to even try  
To find a voice to speak your mind  
When you do, all you wanna do is cry_

_Well maybe you should cry  


* * *

_

Ever since that evening in Central Park there had been a noticeable change in Gabriella's demeanour: her eyes bubbled with a warmth that threatened to explode; a soft smile perched itself on her lips, daring to topple over into a grin at any moment. Some days she would wake up from a painless dream and some days it took more than a moment for the shattering truth to break its way back into her heart's core. Some days her writing wasn't just an escape: it once again became more than a distraction from the terrible reality of the life she now had to face.

It was a reality that she no longer had to face alone.

Some days when Gabriella walked into the coffee shop with her notepad, she never even moved beyond the counter. As Mondays blended into Tuesdays that then transmutated into Wednesdays, Gabriella's visits to the establishment started to occur later and later in the day. She would amble downtown in the late afternoon, giving herself an hour or so to write before the shop closed. When the last of the patrons had vacated the eatery, her notepad would fall closed and as Troy moved around her clearing away cups and wiping down tables – he would never accept her help – she would exchange care-free, easy conversation with him. On good days, Gabriella ignored the calling of her favourite table in the far corner of the café and instead hopped up onto the stool by the counter.

Before there had never been a 'good' day: there had only been 'worse', 'bad' or 'better'.

Those were the days where her muse danced with greatest abandon and she often found herself scrabbling for a pen as soon as she returned to her warming apartment. Her dreams would flit between tales of lovers and grievers as they waltzed with optimism.

On good days, Gabriella's trips to the coffee shop would be succeeded by visits to the cinema, to art galleries and to pizzerias. Some nights they would just go back to Troy's cosy student apartment and fill the hours until the day started to slumber with idle chatter.

Today hadn't been a good day.

There hadn't been a good day all week.

As her friendship with Troy had developed, Gabriella had been eaten alive by a guilt and sorrow that conflicted violently with her happiness. Troy seemed to innately understand Gabriella: he knew precisely what to do to make her laugh; he had the uncanny ability to voice her unspoken thoughts and finish off her sentences. He could take chase away her melancholy before it really got chance to take hold.

Beyond his understanding of her, though, Troy made every fibre of Gabriella's being hum with a contentment and excitement that she had never felt before. There was barely a moment when their interaction didn't release a swarm of butterflies from their keep in the pit of her stomach. The blush that spread across her cheeks was becoming so habitual that she wondered what her complexion had looked like before Troy.

The 'something' that moulded and restricted their interaction was becoming more and more defined.

Gabriella Montez was falling in love.

Her heart was soaring through the air, descending, tumbling, cart-wheeling along the way, desperate to plunge into the golden pool of warmth marking its destination.

Her heart was in free-fall. It should have been exhilarating but instead Gabriella was petrified. Each extra second that her heart was suspended in this inertia tightened scorn's grip upon its edges, stretching the muscle outwards and outwards and searing the back of her throat with acidic tears and jagged breaths.

The butterflies swarming in her stomach weren't sending a glittering ardour along her veins: their wings were sharp against the edges of the organ, raising a storm of bile from within her digestive tract and ripping her insides from their place.

The free-fall wasn't a descent from the top of a rainbow into the pot of gold at the end.

It was heart-breaking.

As each day passed, Gabriella fought to defy the definition of these feelings. Guilt gnawed on the edges of her euphoria, it taunted her with the knowledge that each moment she spent swooning was one less that she spent mourning.

Worse, it reminded her that she would never be able to share the euphoria with her mother. Gabriella wanted nothing more than to be able to pick up the telephone and let her mother guess what had made her sound so happy. She longed for the teasing that would ensue the next time they met up as her mother commented on the blush that blossomed at the mere mention of Troy's name.

Gabriella could imagine precisely how the conversations would develop: she pictured them in her day-dreams.

She wanted more than anything for her mother to tell her what to do.

The emptiness never gave her a reply

It never would.

That morning Gabriella had woken from a pleasant dream; her mother was its main protagonist. She woke up that morning and she wished that she could just fall back into her slumber and cling to the dreamt conversations and embraces where her mother's smile shone more brightly than it ever had before.

Gabriella knew that the one thing that could make her feel better and forget the gaping hole in her waking reality was the one thing that would make her cry harder when she went home.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to open up and cling to Troy as she recounted each and every one of her fears. She wanted him to tell her how to block out the deafening echo of silence as her Mother failed to reply.

She needed him but she couldn't ask him.

Gabriella couldn't spill her soul to him because she was scared that her love was unrequited. She would clutch onto her one-sided adoration for forever and a day as long as he didn't move from her side.

His friendship was everything and yet it would never be enough.

It was a damning truth that flooded her mind with a stagnant grey and the tears that were caught paralysed behind her corneas, too weak to fall.

* * *

_And I see you hiding your face in your hands  
Talking bout far-away lands  
You think no one understands  
Listen to my hands_

_And all of this life  
Moves around you  
For all that you claim  
You're standing still  
You are moving too  
You are moving too  
You are moving too_

_  
I will move you_

_

* * *

  
_

Looking back at that moment, some rainy day in the future, Gabriella would probably be able to pinpoint the feeling. She would mull over their story and retrospectively be able to identify the tinge of emotion, the instinct that had spawned everything.

Her dreams had been placid; a dark blanket of warmth had wrapped around her subconscious, sheltering it from the blistering cold of tears and sorrow. Deep within the comforting darkness, insignificantly small but miraculously bright, something had sparked. A sound from outside of the bubble had sparked her brain into wakefulness and Gabriella's eyes had trembled dazedly open.

In that blissfully confused second between sleep and vigilance, her heart was pirouetting above the impulse that had driven Gabriella to the coffee shop in her sadness earlier that day. It was the same impulse that had led her to 'Lily's' in the first place all those months ago.

It was a unique caprice, fleeting, but it defined everything.

The moment passed and Gabriella blinked as she tried to place the scratchy material rubbing against her cheek and the woody aroma lingering in the musky air embracing her body. As sleep traipsed gradually from her mind, she identified the smell as Troy's; she surmised that the material was covering his couch. Slowly sitting up, the blanket that had been covering her pooled around her waist and Gabriella blinked through the darkness – the near darkness.

Turning her head towards the crack of light disrupting the room's snug obscurity, Gabriella frowned as her ears were caressed by a captivatingly mellow voice being accompanied by soft, tentative guitar chords. Her ears strained to catch the lyrics, to hear more of the aural sonnet and her feet carried out their bidding, lifting her instinctively from the couch and across the room.

Her hesitation as she reached the door that had been left ajar was a sign; it was her mind signalling that after that moment nothing would be the same again. Stepping over the threshold would be stepping into change.

The underside of the wooden door brushed softly against the carpet and Gabriella froze in place under the door-frame; her hand supported her weight by resting on the wall as she listened to Troy's smooth voice melt the lyrics waiting obediently on his tongue.

It only took a moment, one winding, electrified moment, before Troy realised that Gabriella was watching him. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck and he knew.

He knew that the girl who he had left slumbering was no longer reclined on his settee.

The chill running down his spine and circling his pounding heart told him that this moment was something more.

His fingers stilled on the middle strings of his guitar and his eyes met Gabriella's. The distance between them was filled with anxious breaths and pregnant gasps and it faded to nothing.

Gabriella's eyes were wide, her throat filled with cool air, and her lips flapped in the silence as she tried to say something to tip them over the edge into the new phase that was dawning over them without either Troy or herself having realised. "I've never heard that song before," she whispered into the emotion-thick air. "It's beautiful."

Still clutching to the guitar, Troy felt strangely helpless: it was his shield and yet it was betrayer. Her words had been innocuous but a truthful answer would be explosive. "How long were you listening?" he asked croakily, ignoring her implicit question.

Gabriella's eyes darted over his face: there was something thrilling in the air and she just couldn't define it. "Not long," she started softly. "I woke up and heard something and - ." She mistook the startled turquoise of his eyes for anger at being interrupted. "I didn't mean to intrude. I just – "

Lowering his guitar to the floor, Troy held his hands up in apology. "No, you weren't," he rushed to explain. "I didn't mean to wake you." He paused, his eyes falling to his hands. "I didn't mean for you to hear," he mumbled, not nearly quietly enough for it to pass her by.

Her lethargic mind was forcing the blurry edges of the puzzle together. Curved edge was meeting straight but she knew that there had to be a fit. Gabriella took a shy step forward and her reply challenged him uncharacteristically. "What was the song, Troy?"

The tender firmness of her voice shattered the diffidence of the moment. He gulped and when their eyes met again there was no option but to answer.

His voice sounded in the silence and Troy and Gabriella stepped over into the future. "I wrote it," he elaborated quietly. Gabriella's heart stilled, ecstatically, and began to tremor at his next utterance. "I wrote it because of you."

Her mind danced over the lyrics that she had caught as she had moved from the living room to his bedroom, her consciousness mulled over their significance and the air crackled with recognition; it ignited with desire and longing and burst into flame with love.

Gabriella stepped closer and her movement tugged Troy to his feet. "Why?" she asked, her voice tingling with awe.

Swallowing, Troy's left hand raised to grip her own whilst his right hand lifted. Slowly, his thumb brushed over her pristine brow and down the side of her cheek before tenderly caressing the indigo bags hanging under her eyes. Gabriella's eyes drifted shut at the tenderness of his action; his warm breath on her cheek suspended her mind in rapture. Intense blue met smouldering brown again and Troy smiled softly. "I just wish I could make it go away," he admitted. "I wish I could do something to let you sleep properly again. I want to make you happy."

His hand remained cupping her cheek and Gabriella surprised herself with her ability to respond. "You do," she croaked and the iced wall of her retinas cracked and melted, tears beginning to seep out of the corners of her eyes without her realising. "And you don't..." She bit her lip as she tried to clutch onto her remaining composure. "I wish she could meet you, so much." Gabriella sobbed loudly and it was all that it took for Troy to bundle her into his arms. Her body trembled against him and his comforting words and caresses embraced her. "I miss her and it hurts." Her admission faded into a painful groan as he swayed her in his arms. "And I feel so guilty for being happy. It's so unfair and I'm confused and everything just feels so wrong."

"Hey," Troy whispered into her hair. The back of his fingers trailed up her arm, ghosting across her shoulder until they paused underneath her chin and tilted it upwards. Their eyes bore into each other, their souls intermingling and swimming in the depth of the other's irises, and time stopped.

Their hearts stopped.

Grief and irrationality stopped.

There was no telling whose head tilted first. Troy and Gabriella's lips met softly, tentatively, fully and the grey fog dragging her body downwards lifted. Flashes of white sparked behind both their retinas and scorn released Gabriella's heart from its spiked claws.

Their mouths separated, just a fraction of an inch, and their warm breaths mixed.

Finally, everything fell into place.

* * *

**A/N: Once again massive thanks for all of your feedback. I know this isn't the most uplifting/"easy" of stories to read so your encouragement and perseverance means a lot! **


	4. Epilogue

**All She Wrote**

**_Epilogue_**

**_

* * *

  
_**

A kiss has many meanings and many forms. The meeting of lips can be like sodium meeting water, explosive, blazing. It can compensate for a lack, for an ability to find the words – for love, for deception, for gratitude, for emotions that defy definition. A kiss can be comfort. Kisses are warming, joyful, pleading, inadequate. They can signal the start of something new, the end of something beloved.

They are everything that falls in between the two.

The kiss shared by Troy and Gabriella that evening months ago had been all of that and more. Their lips had brushed together tentatively and said everything that they had each been too scared to voice. Their kiss had spoken of powerful emotions that seemed too overwhelmingly real to be true. Their souls and bodies had crackled in the heat of the exploding tension between them. Their hearts had frolicked in the fulgor of their newly explored feelings.

The union of their lips had built a bridge between them and their friendship and a seemingly unreachable romance perched on the horizon.

Up until that point every day since her mother's death had seemed stretched; some invisible power had pulled the crepuscular hours separating the days outwards and outwards until their thin, translucent substance had woven a web of timelessness and morose confusion around Gabriella. Time had stretched and Gabriella had had no choice but to wade through the obscurity. That kiss had been the lighthouse guiding her path through the fog. It had been the closing of a door and a ventilation of her mind.

After Troy and Gabriella had broken apart there had been no fear or nervousness. They both knew that everything was how it was supposed to be. Their faces had been split by delirious smiles and Troy had wrapped his arms tightly around Gabriella's body before lifting her up and swinging her around until he had almost tripped in his dizziness. Less than thirty seconds later Troy had asked her to be his girlfriend and Gabriella still wondered that such a simple request had been able to make her feel so alive.

The days were still heavy; she still carried them and the memories, the sorrowful memories, on her back as she ambled through the closing weeks of summer vacation. What was the end of Troy's summer vacation was the end of Gabriella's idleness. In two weeks she would be starting her course at New York University and she was positive that it would be yet another thing to lessen the burden of the past on her shoulders.

Opening her eyes after an uncertain period of quiet, Gabriella smiled softly at the concentrated expression on Troy's face. She reached up to brush her thumb across the frown lines creasing his forehead and watched as his blue eyes gradually regained clarity. "Penny for your thoughts?" Gabriella asked; her voice was barely louder than a whisper. It was as though she feared interrupting the mellow symphony of the zephyr floating around their bodies.

Troy's eyes darted over his girlfriend's face, the true reason for his pensiveness seeking concealment, until his lips twitched as he flexed the arm that she was resting on. "I was just thinking that I have lost all feeling in my arm," he teased.

Her eyes widened and her lips parted apologetically before Gabriella shifted so that- she was leaning on her elbow and holding her weight off his limb. "Ooops," she responded with a blush. "I can't help that your arm makes a good pillow."

Shrugging disarmingly, Troy now curled his arm around her waist. "It's a sacrifice that I'm willing to make if it means getting to cuddle a beautiful girl," he charmed and his ego paraded in the further reddening of her cheeks. The flirting was more natural, brasher, than it had been before their relationship had left platonic behind it. Before lingering looks and hesitant caresses had needed to suffice, but now Troy relished being able to woo Gabriella with his words; he took pride in thinking that he had been one of the few people to ever make her believe in her beauty.

Gabriella traced a finger over the line of collarbone peeking out of his V-neck jumper with a bashful grin. "What else were you thinking about?" she probed further, sensing that he was deflecting her questioning for a reason. Expanding the parameters of her relationship with Troy had largely distracted her heart from its lamenting. Her fears about allowing herself to feel something other than pain had sunken back into their malicious pit. It still felt as though there was an icy moat cutting her heart off from the warmth and energy of the blood flowing through her veins. She honestly wondered whether the hole in her heart would ever be filled.

Its presence no longer seared her body with constant pain though.

Troy's lips crinkled at how perceptive she was: he could never distract her thoughts when an idea took hold and it was a curiosity and stubbornness that he was enamoured with. His shoulders slumped slightly as he answered. "I was wondering what you were thinking about." His tone was almost flat and despite the vagueness of his words, Gabriella knew precisely what in particular he was referring to.

Sighing, Gabriella nuzzled her nose against the sleeve of his jumper. "Mainly how – " She searched for the word, "content I feel: how much fun we've had the last two months; how excited I am about starting college again." Gabriella chuckled softly to herself when Troy brushed a kiss against her temple. She sat up and folded her legs under her thighs as she boldly changed tact. "My Mom loved a good romantic novel, you know, and she adored _Les Miserables_. Even towards the end she always remembered that damn story," she paused to roll her eyes and nibbled her lips as she contemplated how to continue.

Troy's eyes twinkled with mischievous bliss at the blush that crossed her cheeks. "Marius and Cosette, love at first sight?" Troy questioned.

"Yeah..."

Gabriella's insides crackled at the smirk teasing Troy's lips as he raised his eyebrows at her. "Wonder why you decided to bring that up, out of the blue?" he joked. "I know this great story," he charmed, desiring a greater part in this next chapter of their lives. "Once upon a time there was this girl, -" He narrowed his eyes in insult when Gabriella snorted and interrupted his story-telling.

"'_This girl'_?" Gabriella mocked. "Eloquent as always, Troy."

Not leaving her the opportunity to continue teasing him, Troy pinched Gabriella's lips closed with his thumb and forefinger. "Shush! You've interrupted my creative flow now," he proclaimed overdramatically. "Once upon a time there was an extremely beautiful, kind, intelligent, funny, if sometimes a bit mean, girl," Troy began again and his eyes danced with mirth when Gabriella's own bulged at his final addition to the list of qualities. "She was really sad because some crappy stuff had happened to her and she'd moved to a big city to try and start again. She loved to write so one day she wandered around trying to find somewhere quiet to try and sort out her head. She found a coffee shop, arguably employing the best barista in town, and sauntered in, completely unaware of the fact that she was about to knock the poor guy for six." His cheeky smile had dimmed into an almost bashful one as he continued. "She walked right up to the counter, distracting the guy from his newspaper, and the guy almost forgot what coffee was in the first place." Troy hesitated as Gabriella's eyes softened and the joking nature of the past few minutes evaporated. "Does this sound familiar?" he murmured.

"Is this the one where the coffee guy makes the girl smile for the first time in an eternity?" A deep-rose stain diffused across her cheeks as she suggested the tale's continuation.

Smiling, Troy softly marked the perimeter of her blush with the pad of his thumb. "Maybe: my version's the one where the coffee guy can't stop thinking about the girl and watching the girl and wanting more than anything to be with the girl, even though they've barely spoken."

"Your version is a bit more romantic than mine," Gabriella admitted awkwardly. "In my version the girl's kinda too embarrassed and oblivious at first to realise that – " Her words trailed off into nothing and she shrugged in order to fill the void with meaning. "Because, you know, the guy is sort of cute and has these amazing, sapphire-like blue eyes that she can't get out of her head and he says the most adorable things and it made the girl all flustered and unable to realise what's going on."

Troy laughed. "What was going on?" he asked and his voice was so unintentionally seductive that, for just a moment, Gabriella thought he had managed to charm the breeze into blissful submission.

It was rare that Gabriella would be the forthright one in their relationship. So many things had been perfect since they had become a couple: so natural and unassuming. The laughter and giggles had flowed more freely: no longer reined in by the nervousness and fear of unrequitement. When she really thought about it, deep down inside she had known for a long time that Troy's feelings for her went beyond mere friendship. It had been his innate understanding of her, his knowledge that she needed time and his anxiety about frightening her off, that had nearly always stopped him from making the first move at times like this; even today. Their relationship had evolved so much; they had experienced and explored and erupted with happiness, and yet he still worried about pushing her too far.

He knew that the acknowledgement of each milestone was another first without her Mother by her side.

He knew how much that fact destroyed her.

Gabriella stared into Troy's eyes, she saw the answer and the knowledge reflected in his translucent irises, and it only strengthened her conviction. Perhaps the earnest of the moment would have been more appropriate for her revelation: their first kiss had been utterly emotion-wrought; their first time making-love had been intense and devoted. She couldn't keep her lips from twitching though as she realised that Troy knew exactly what she had meant. He had known just as long as she had and had probably felt it himself even longer.

"She was falling in love." Gabriella giggled at Troy's exploding grin.

"She was, was she?" he murmured delightedly into her skin as he dropped his head to rest in the crook of her neck.

Gabriella nodded and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Completely and utterly."

He danced butterfly kisses along the curve of her neck before raising his head and attempting to speak through his euphoric grin. "Can I tell you a secret?" he whispered into the breeze. "My guy kinda fell in love with your girl the moment that she walked into the coffee shop." Troy waited to gauge her reaction; his next phrase hesitated waveringly on the tip of his tongue. A chocolate ring of delight shimmered around the edge of Gabriella's pupils and spurred Troy into continuing. "I love you, Gabriella."

Her resulting smile stretched muscles that Gabriella had never even known existed. "I love you too, Troy." Ecstasy crawled up her spine and made her shiver in the echo of the words. She carried on smiling as she caught Troy watching her, anticipating that some sort of dark cloud would settle over her. Gabriella's smile dimmed, but it didn't disappear. "I know," she murmured, answering his unvoiced concerned. As she paused and the obvious words lingered in the air between them, she cocked her head thoughtfully. "You know how much I wish she was here." Gabriella shrugged helplessly and one of her hands busied itself twirling a piece of grass around her finger until it snapped. "It's funny..." When her eyes casually met Troy's she couldn't help but giggle at how inappropriate her choice of wording was. "Not funny, definitely not funny. Peculiar is a better word. But, you know, it's peculiar how much it used to hurt to think about what had happened. Physically it hurt to know that Mom wasn't here anymore. It was like the worst heartburn you could imagine and it consumed me. But now...it makes me sad to think about it. I still can't stand the thought that I am never ever going to see her again. Sometimes it makes me cry and it still stops me from falling asleep a lot of the time but at some point along the line it's stopped being painful." She sighed loudly as she looked up at Troy again and she smiled as she felt him squeeze her hand in his. She hadn't even noticed him reach across to wrap her small hand in his larger one. "I've never been in love before; she'd have wanted to see it. She loved a good fairy tale and maybe I'm being naive but this feels about as fairy tale as real life can get."

A boyish grin charmed Troy's lips as he stroked a hand through the front strands of Gabriella's hair. "Even though I don't have a trusty white steed with which to save you from dragons?"

Gabriella laughed and her eyes shined coyly before she responded. "You do have an unreliable, white truck though."

"Well if my truck doesn't get us back home now we'll know why." His eyebrows furrowed as he answered her unvoiced question. "She's sensitive you know."

Snorting, Gabriella played with his fingers before bringing them to her lips and kissing the digits. "That truck would have been the only thing my Mom would have disliked about you," she giggled. "She would have thought you were so _dreamy,_" Gabriella informed him, shuddering at the word. "It would have been so embarrassing. We really were friends, you know, but she took it way too far when she tried to talk about boys with me."

Troy smiled softly at the look of horror on her face. "You know, my Grandpa died when I was pretty young really: he smoked like a chimney and paid the price, I suppose. I only have really vague memories of him, but when I was younger and my Nanna would leave me in the kitchen or the front of the store for a minute, she always warned that Pops would be watching me. She said she always knew when I'd done something I wasn't supposed to because he would tell her." Troy shrugged. "Mostly she was trying to scare me, but I know she really believes that he is still there with her." His fingers tangled in her hair as he momentarily desisted from combing his fingers through her waves. "Your Mom's probably watching us now, keeping an eye on you."

A rueful smile smoothed over Gabriella's lips at the thought. "I'd like to think so."

Her eyebrows creased suspiciously at the smirk that made its way onto Troy's face. "Although," he began in a mysteriously gravelly tone. "You just told me that you love me." He had to break off at the grin that burst over her features again. "And I told you that I love you too." Both of their smiles curved even more widely. "And you keep smiling like that and I have wanted to kiss you so badly since you first said it. The problem is that we're lying down and I'm pretty delirious really and I'm just not sure that I'll be able to stay coherent long enough to pay attention to what my hands are doing." Gabriella blushed and rolled her eyes at the seductive gleam in his eyes. "I really don't think your Mom would be happy seeing that."

His thumb brushed across her temple a few times as he tilted her head downwards to meet his poised lips. "I love you, Gabriella Montez," he repeated again softly against her mouth.

A kiss can be a lot of things. For Troy and Gabriella it was butterflies and fireworks, glittering love and blazing passion. It was a healing full-stop placed at the end of a chapter. It was the decorated opening of a new one.

Gabriella could sense the future now; she no longer felt cut off from it. She had realised that the past might define her, but that it didn't have to imprison her. With each step that Gabriella took, the weight of absence and the past would make her footstep tread that much noticeably deeper. It would leave a more lasting imprint in the ground.

She would never stop longing for her parents to be back by her side. She would always wish that they were there to share her joy, to divide her sorrow. Gabriella wondered whether it would ever stop being instinct to want to turn to them when something new and exciting happened.

Troy was a good start.

* * *

**A/N: I don't often leave particularly personal authors' notes but this has been a pretty personal story so I just wanted to say a special thank you to everybody that has taken the time to leave feedback. This final chapter is dedicated to a wonderfully selfless, vibrant and sorely missed woman, my Granny, who lost her third battle with cancer at the beginning of summer. She would have been 84 later this week. Love forever.**


End file.
